


Between the Shelves

by cedarbranch



Series: Erase, Rewind, Repeat [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode Style, Gen, Michael Shelley Lives, Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Statement Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:21:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23191573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cedarbranch/pseuds/cedarbranch
Summary: Statement of Sadie Clarke, regarding a strange section of her university library. Statement taken direct from subject, July 2nd, 2017. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.Or: A university student escapes the Distortion, and rescues its predecessor.
Series: Erase, Rewind, Repeat [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1667341
Comments: 4
Kudos: 75





	Between the Shelves

**Author's Note:**

> hello, it is I, once again hitting you with a michael lives AU

[ARCHIVIST]

Statement of Sadie Clarke, regarding a strange section of her university library. Statement taken direct from subject, June 24th, 2017. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. 

Whenever you're ready.

[SADIE]

Right. Well… I guess I should start with the library, then, yeah? I’ve always had a thing about libraries. Ever since I was a kid, I’d spend all my time at the local public library, just reading and reading. My parents would leave me there half the time, since they knew I wasn’t going anywhere, and over the years the librarians became almost like family. When I was looking at universities, it was one of the most important factors for me: wherever I went, it had to have a good library. And when I say good, I mean… well, the word I want to use is _regal._ You know the type. Hundreds of years old, all stone towers and intricate glass windows, with marble walls and chandeliers. 

I don’t mean to sound entitled, it was never about finding the fanciest place I could, it's just… there's something calming about walking into a place like that. It helps me clear my head. I suppose I should mention that I’m a history student, so it definitely helps to know that I’m in a place that was dedicated to learning before me, and probably will be after. Like a monument to the pursuit of knowledge. 

I toured a few universities before I made my decision, but as soon as I stepped foot in the library at UCL, it was over. Have you seen it? It's wonderful, really. It’s got these lovely old arches that give it a sophisticated atmosphere without becoming too grandiose, and the shelves are sort of clustered together so even with the high ceilings it feels cozy. For my first couple years of school I practically lived there. It’s open twenty-four hours, so I would find a room to tuck away in and stay there from the afternoon straight through til midnight. I loved it. Well, most of the time. 

I didn’t like staying there too late. After midnight, the number of people there starts dwindling, and it feels emptier and emptier, until you’re the only little pinprick of life in the place. It gets kind of spooky. I never went upstairs when I was pulling all-nighters. Even if I was the only one left, being on the first floor still made me feel… close to the rest of the world. Secure. I could just get up and walk out if I wanted. Now, I don’t believe in the supernatural—or, I didn’t, before. So you wouldn’t think it would bother me so much, but what can I say. You spend a lot of time thinking about dead people when you’re studying history, and once you’re all alone in a spooky old library, I guess it all gets a little too real. 

The first time something really weird happened was during exam season last semester. My grades had been slipping and I really, really needed to do well, so I was cramming hard. You know how when you’re pulling an all-nighter you end up downing a load of coffee, but it doesn’t make you feel any more awake, just jittery? It was that kind of night. By three AM, I was so stressed out and jumpy and exhausted that I could barely focus on anything. I kept trying to push through it, but I would just end up reading the same paragraph over and over. I decided it would be better to just go home and try to sleep, so I packed up my things and headed for the exit.

I had to walk past the stacks on my way out. You know the aisle space in between two shelves? Well, I glanced into one as I was walking out, and I had to do a double take. There should have just been a solid wall at the end of the aisle. I mean, there _was._ There always had been. I’d been in that library a thousand times, and if there had been a random door placed between the shelves, I would’ve known about it. But I’d never seen this door before. 

It didn’t match the rest of the library. It was bright yellow, with a black handle, and looking at it felt… weird. It made me want to open it. I don’t know why the urge was so strong. I’m not a particularly adventurous person, and the whole situation was way too creepy for my tastes, so I shouldn’t have moved towards it. But in that moment I forgot all about going home. I took a step closer, and I honestly think I would’ve just gone for it if my backpack hadn’t hit the edge of a shelf, knocking my water bottle out of its pocket. It hit the floor with a loud clank of metal, and I must’ve jumped a foot. I bent down to grab it, and once I had looked away from the door, something in me told me not to look back. I got out of there as fast as I could. 

The next day, I went back to the library and checked the space where I had seen the door. There was nothing there. Just a wall. I brushed it off as sleep deprivation, and didn’t think about it again for a while. But then, a few months later, I lost track of time and ended up alone in the stacks again, and I saw that same door. It made my spine go rigid. Again, I assumed it was due to sleep deprivation, but it was starting to eat at me, even during the daytime when I wasn’t studying. I had this anxious pit in my stomach all the time. It’s one thing if you get stressed out and hallucinate once, but if it keeps happening… Let’s just say I had reason to be worried. I tried moving to a different library, but it followed me. I tried to focus on self-care for a while, do some meditation, but nothing worked. At that point I seriously thought I was going mad. And those bloody doors just kept appearing, taunting me. 

You’d think that recognizing something as a hallucination would make it less scary, but it really doesn’t. You can tell yourself it’s not real all you like, but you still can’t take your eyes off it. It still sends that icy knife of fear through you, your heartbeat spiking with the adrenaline, feeling like you’re rooted to the floor. It shouldn’t have even _been_ that scary. It was just a door. But something about it felt so indescribably wrong, and it had such a pull to it, that I knew it had to be something more.

I saw it two more times before I finally gave in and opened it. I figured I had nothing left to lose. If this nightmare was going to keep haunting me, I might as well go deeper into it. I thought maybe it was one of those things where if I saw it through to the end, then I’d be released from it, and it wouldn’t come back. I was so stupid. 

When I opened the door, it creaked loudly, like the hinges hadn’t been oiled in years. I knew right away that something was off, because the sound wasn’t right. It just… kept going. It reminded me of when I was in my children’s choir and we’d sing a round, where one section would start singing, and then a few seconds later the next section would start, and we’d all end up singing different parts with the melodies intertwining. But that layering of sound was always beautiful. The endless creak of that door made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. 

But for some reason, I stepped inside anyway, and the door swung shut behind me. 

A long corridor stretched out in front of me, with these bright swirling patterns all over the walls. There were paintings hung every few feet, showing that same pattern. They weren’t normal paintings. They… moved. The patterns kept shifting, circling in new directions. It made me nauseous, and if I looked for too long, it almost made it feel like the floor was moving, dipping and rising like the sea. I think there were mirrors on the walls, too, but I couldn’t be sure. Everything was… It was… _[sigh]_ I’m trying my best to describe it, but I can’t do that feeling justice. Standing there, it was like everything around me was exactly the same, making it impossible to tell one direction from the next, but it was all changing so much that it would be pointless to try and keep track of directions anyway. 

When I looked over my shoulder, the door I had come through was gone. 

I freaked out a bit, but at that point I was so exhausted I was barely coherent, so I didn’t have the energy to panic for long. I just started walking. The hallway started to fork and branch out, and before long I was thoroughly lost. I don’t know how long I spent in there before I heard the voice from somewhere behind me.

It was a woman. Her voice was… neat, like a lawyer, or a schoolteacher, maybe, but with something strange beneath it. It was kind of… crackly, like static. She said, “Are you lost?” Just like that. “Are you lost.” I remember that struck me as a silly question. Of course I was lost, how could I not have been? And then I wondered why she would ask such an obvious question, and I figured she must already know the answer. 

And that made me very, very afraid. 

I just kept walking, faster now. I didn’t want to turn around and look at her, whoever—whatever she was. She couldn’t have been a normal person. If she had been lost like me, she wouldn’t have asked it like that, I was certain of it. So I just left. I heard her laugh as I was walking away, and it sounded all wrong. For a second, I almost thought I caught a glimpse of something in one of the mirrors, and it… well. It was all the confirmation I needed that I’d made the right decision.

I started paying more attention to the mirrors after that. A couple times I got flashes of movement, and whenever I did, I’d take the closest turn I could, making my path as twisting and directionless as possible. I don’t know how much it helped. I couldn’t tell how much time had passed, but I still hadn’t seen any exits, and I was starting to freak out again. To top it all off, I was _really_ tired. It was so hard to keep my eyes open. I’d let them fall shut just for a moment, and then suddenly I’d open them to find myself still walking, surrounded by an entirely new hallway. I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist forever. Eventually I’d have to stop and rest, and then that thing would find me, and it would be over. 

I was just about reaching my limit when I saw someone. They were sitting a ways down the hallway, their back against the wall, seemingly asleep. At first I thought it might be the woman trying to trick me, but as I took a few cautious steps closer, the figure didn’t move, so I thought it must not be her. Maybe it was someone like me, who’d finally given up and stopped to rest. 

They hadn’t noticed me. I inched just close enough to make out their face. It was a man—he had really long hair and a face that was almost pretty, but he was definitely a man. He was wearing a turtleneck and a long coat, and he looked even more tired than I felt, which was saying something. I got down on my knees next to him and touched his shoulder. He didn’t move. It was only then that I realized he might be, y’know, not sleeping, so I checked his pulse. It was faint, but definitely there, so I shook him a little bit until his eyelids began to stir. He sat up, and his expression was… scared, for sure, and shocked, but there was something… I don’t know. He almost looked relieved.

I asked him if he was all right, and he said he was. He introduced himself as Michael Shelley. He said he knew the way out. I tried to warn him about the voice I’d heard, but he just shook his head and said he already knew. He tried to get up and stumbled a bit, so I let him lean against me as we were walking. I tell you, I’d been wandering those corridors for ages and still had no clue of the scope of them, but he seemed to know them like the back of his hand. He couldn’t move very fast, I think he was hurt—I really didn’t want to ask what had happened—but he was confident of the directions he gave. We went down twists and turns, and it seemed like we should have just been heading deeper into the maze, but all of a sudden, there it was. A door. He laughed at the sight of it—kind of a weird laugh, but not at all warped like that woman’s, thank god. I opened it up, and instead of the library, we stepped out into an alleyway.

My phone hadn’t worked in the hallways, but when I pulled it out, it worked, and a quick check told me we were in the middle of East London. Don’t ask me how we got there. I just wanted to go home. I asked Michael where he was from, and he got this faraway look on his face, and said he didn’t really know anymore. Now that I could get a proper look at him, he seemed really badly off. I couldn’t pinpoint why—there weren’t any bloodstains on him or anything, but he was totally out of it. I suggested we go to a hospital, but he refused, and I didn’t exactly know what to do, so… we just went back to my flat. He’s been there ever since. I’m not sure if he has a home, and I think he might have a touch of amnesia? I-I haven’t been brave enough to get into it with him. I’ve haven’t been brave enough to think about any of this until now. 

That’s it, I suppose.

[ARCHIVIST]

You—that’s—you’re _sure_ he said his name was Michael Shelley?

[SADIE]

Yes.

[ARCHIVIST]

Not just Michael?

[SADIE]

No, it was definitely Michael Shelley. I mean, I never asked for ID or anything, but—

[ARCHIVIST]

No, no, that’s… It doesn’t matter. I just—I think we’ve met before.

[SADIE]

Really? D-do you know where he’s from?

[ARCHIVIST]

I… not really, no. I’m sorry, this is… He’s been living in your flat all this time? How long?

[SADIE]

I dunno. A few weeks, maybe? I know it sounds weird, but he was the only person who could understand what I’d been through, so I didn’t… I guess I didn’t really want him to leave.

[ARCHIVIST]

And it’s all been… normal? He’s been normal?

[SADIE]

I mean, as normal as it could be, considering how we met. He’s kind of skittish, and he doesn’t really talk much, I think he might be… y’know, traumatized. I don’t think he’s ever left the flat, he’s weird about doors. But it’s been pretty normal, yeah. He just kind of sits around and reads.

[ARCHIVIST]

Did you tell him you were coming to make a statement?

[SADIE]

No. Like I said, I haven’t really brought it up with him. I think we’re both still processing, and I didn’t want to spring it on him if it wasn’t ready. It seems like he went through a lot worse than me.

[ARCHIVIST]

Yes, I’m sure he did. Do you think you could bring him in?

[SADIE]

What, for a statement?

[ARCHIVIST]

Yes.

[SADIE]

I mean… I dunno. I could ask him, yeah.

[ARCHIVIST]

I... I know what happened to him. Bits of it, at least. But there are pieces I’m missing. I think if I had the full picture, I—I might be able to help.

[SADIE]

Alright. If you know who he is, what his life used to be… if you can help him, I’ll do it.

[ARCHIVIST]

I think if anyone could help, it would be me. Us. The Institute.

[SADIE]

Yeah. I didn’t even really expect you to believe me, so you’re already doing more than anyone else would. 

[PAUSE]

I suppose I’ll see you soon, then?

[ARCHIVIST]

Yes. I’ll see you. 

[CLICK]

[CLICK]

[ARCHIVIST]

I don’t understand. I thought—Helen is the Distortion now. She is what Michael used to be. The way she was talking about it, I-I just assumed that Michael was dead, or gone, at the very least. I don’t… If Michael Shelley somehow survived whatever that was, I need to speak to him. I need to know what happened. Of course, he did try to kill me the last time I saw him, but I—I somehow don’t think that’s relevant anymore. 

[PAUSE]

Gertrude made him what he was. If things are different now, if he’s… still human, o-or closer to human than he was before, then I think we owe it to him to try and help.

[CLICK]

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on [tumblr](spiralsandeyes.tumblr.com) if u want!


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